Thoughts on McCain

Support democracy, not dictators – 02/05/2011 | MiamiHerald.com. For decades we have allied ourselves with autocrats in the Middle East and looked the other way as they crack down on political expression, free speech and human rights out of fear of the unknown and the desire for stability in the region. We support these regimes because of the uncertainty of who may come into power if we press for democracy. But, we need to question whether this is good long-term policy.  If the objective has been regional stability, we have not succeeded. Recent events across the region show that the…

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com. We Americans spout bromides about freedom. Democracy campaigners in the Middle East have been enduring unimaginable tortures as the price of their struggle — at the hands of dictators who are our allies — yet they persist. In Bahrain, former political prisoners have said that their wives were taken into the jail in front of them. And then the men were told that unless they confessed, their wives would promptly be raped. That, or more conventional tortures, usually elicited temporary confessions, yet for years or decades those activists persisted in struggling for democracy. And we…